Comedy With a Side of Disgust

THE few times I have seen the talk show “Chelsea Lately,” a premonition of a world flattened by small talk and Kim Kardashian’s rear, my sense of its outspoken and attractive host, Chelsea Handler, has been that she is not so much giving quarter to her guests as holding them at bay with her intelligence.

It is obvious that Ms. Handler, who delights in calling her staff members “idiots,” has a good head on her shoulders. “So, I’m steering this ship,” she will say with a gloomy laugh. She has produced four books in almost as many years. She calls them silly. Silly or not, they have sold in the millions.

Below the neck, Ms. Handler is arranged along old-fashioned lines. Writers have described her as a California surfer type, but the truth is closer to the fantasy. In person, without makeup, her body has the pre-silicone lushness of a ’60s Playmate.

That naturalness also invades her writing, which is apparently how many people discover Ms. Handler. A few days before our meeting for lunch, at Lure Fishbar in SoHo, I picked up her two later books at an airport kiosk; her first, “My Horizontal Life,” an account of her one-night stands that was published in 2005, was also available, but I decided I’d start with Ms. Handler vertical and work my way backward.

On the plane, as the flight attendant was helping me put away my bag, she noticed the books on my seat.

Photo

Credit
Isabel Klett

“Oh, she’s so funny,” she said.

I had the feeling that if I held up one of Ms. Handler’s books, like Norma Rae, the entire plane would burst into applause, or flames.

Very soon the reason for this elation became clear. Perhaps distracted by my snorts of laughter, the colossus in the next seat, a man with thick forearms and a Vandyke, looked up drowsily from his laptop.

At lunch, Ms. Handler listened to my story as I blurted it out. I knew I was dead. Her confidence, her lack of any need to please or pretend she is interested in what you’re saying, is extraordinary to witness, like a steamroller crushing a trike.

“Yeah, that’s my least favorite word, raunchy,” she said, unfolding her napkin. Ms. Handler, who had on khaki pants and a blousy sleeveless top with small gold jewelry, paused to give the waitress her order (ice water with lemon and steamed mussels) and then continued. “Men are more apt to use that word about women than women are. I think that’s why my audience is so female-heavy. They cheer you on, whereas men are, like, you’re not supposed to talk like that.”

Her boredom was evident. (Men, as far as I can tell, have not been shocked by the dirty mouths of female comedians since Roseanne Barr announced to an open mic, “I swallowed.”)

Things hardly improved when I sputtered a comment about her new boyfriend, the hotelier André Balazs, whom she has been dating since January. Ms. Handler gave me a look and then thought of something she had to type into her phone. Probably an S O S to her publicist, I thought.

I forged ahead. Ms. Handler has turned previous relationships into comic fodder. Her last boyfriend, Ted Harbert, who in January became chairman of NBC Broadcasting after running Comcast Entertainment, which owns E!, was a good sport about it. She also talked about the rapper 50 Cent, a close friend.

“I won’t be doing that with André,” she said.

“But when do you draw the line with a boyfriend?” I asked.

“Well, when they ask you to,” she said with a curt laugh. “No, he didn’t ask, but if somebody asks you not to speak about them — or make fun of them publicly, I should say — then you try to respect that. Obviously you can’t avoid that entirely, because I’m not a liar and I’m not going to lie about anything, really. But, yeah, I won’t be discussing our personal life — before, during or after our relationship.”

By now every feminist bone in my body was screaming at me to shut up and forget old André. Ms. Handler has a gift for straight talk and disgust that is wasted on her talk show, which is on E! — wasted even to a degree on her books — and she knows it. “There’s only so much of this nonsense you can talk about before your brain starts to feel like it’s bleeding,” she said.

MS. HANDLER, 36, has had her talk show only three years (she was plucked from the hidden-camera show “Girls Behaving Badly”). Before that, her career was a mixed bag of standup and guest spots supplemented by waitressing, which she did until she was 26.

“I remember having a conversation with my sister, saying: ‘What if I don’t make it? What if I’m still waiting tables when I’m 35,’ ” she recalled. “I was just at the end of my rope. But I’ve been at the end of that rope several times.”

Ms. Handler, who will play Reese Witherspoon’s best friend in the romantic comedy “This Means War,” told me she initially thought she wanted to be an actress. “The fact that I did standup at all was that I was just out of ideas,” she said.

And what she discovered doing standup was not only her voice, but that she liked being in control as well. “Nothing goes on the air or in the books that I don’t approve,” she said. “With every facet of everything, I’m in charge, and that’s the way I like it.” And did she think she needed acting classes to prepare for a movie?

Ms. Handler chuckled. “I don’t take it that seriously. You can act or you can’t. I’m sure a lot of people who are serious about acting would disagree, but I’m not really worried about them.”

She excused herself to go to the ladies room, and when she returned a few minutes later, she sort of flung herself down in the booth in disgust. Apparently the previous visitor to the john had left some dribbles on the seat. She said: “When I go to a bathroom and see that I’m, like, really? You’re a woman — clean up after yourself.”

The waitress hovered. “Anything I should know about?” she asked.

Ms. Handler shook her head. “No, I did a cleanup.” Her gaze shifted back to the waitress. “But if there is, don’t mention my name.”

As fans of Ms. Handler know, she doesn’t discriminate; everyone is fair game: Asians, blacks, slatterns. “I try to make fun of everyone as often as possible, especially minorities,” she said, finishing off her mussels. “I’m a Jewish woman, so ... .” What followed was the standard comedian tomahawk.

“People are too P.C.,” she said. “We need to be focusing on other things. We’re seeking out such grossness in human behavior and want such mindless entertainment. ‘The Real Housewives of Atlanta’ and some of these other shows are more racist. Or ‘16 and Pregnant.’ Getting rewarded for being pregnant when you’re a teenager? Are you serious? I mean, that makes me want to kill somebody.”

She continued: “I had an abortion when I was 16. Because that’s what I should have done. Otherwise I would now have a 20-year-old kid. Anyway, those are things that people shouldn’t be dishonest about it.”

Although not as original as Roseanne, Ms. Handler is at least her equal in calling out the stuff that bugs her, whether it’s class bigotry or the creepiness of the word “panties.” Yet, despite her appeal across several platforms — movies; a new NBC sitcom based on her book “Are You There, Vodka? It’s Me, Chelsea”; her E! spinoff, “After Lately” — she is not a media darling like Tina Fey. “I don’t know if I’m going to be what people call mainstream, ever,” she said. “My personality is just too obnoxious.”

But Ms. Handler is clearly impatient. She acknowledges that her success is partly a result of happy accident and wonders aloud what she could do if she really focused her energy. She has been kicking around ideas for a show, she said, “one that has never been done before,” and indicated that it would be journalistic rather than a talk show. “I need to do it for my own.” (When I called her publicist, Stephen Huvane, later to ask if she was on the level, he said that she was but that it was too soon to discuss the details.)

She told me: “If it’s not with NBC, then I’ll go to HBO or another channel. I’ll do whatever I want to do. I’m not discouraged at all anymore.”

“What convinces you that people will watch something serious?”

“My career. There’s hope for anything.” She glanced down at her lap. “One second — my alarm is going off.” She checked her messages. “Here’s Reese Witherspoon now,” she murmured, and then looked back at me.

But the alarm seemed to have a Pavlovian effect on her interest, and in a few minutes she was hurrying toward the door.

A version of this article appears in print on May 22, 2011, on page ST1 of the New York edition with the headline: Comedy With a Side Of Disgust. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe